ROCKFORD — David Frueh was in his fourth year working at Alcoa in Beloit, Wis., in 2008 when he started to get a bad feeling.

"You could see the signs that something was coming," said the 37-year-old who lives in Rockford. "I kept hearing about the problems in the banking industry and the housing industry."

Workers at the Alcoa plant made aluminum wheels for the auto industry, and the Great Recession hit automakers hard. In 2009, auto dealers would go on to sell their fewest new vehicles since 1982.

Faced with a sudden lack of orders, Alcoa officials announced plans in December 2008 to shut the plant down in the spring, putting about 250 out of work.

"There wasn't much to say," Frueh said. "I just went to work. And when my last day came, I shook some hands and said 'good luck'."

Frueh hit the job market, as did thousands of other newly unemployed. In October, November and December 2008, Anderson Packaging, Bergstrom, Greenlee Textron, United Way of Rock River Valley, the YMCA and a host of other companies or organizations announced layoffs.

According to state estimates, the number of people working in Boone and Winnebago counties hit a record 169,154 in June 2007. By January 2010, it plummeted to 140,685.

Frueh didn't find work of any kind for three months. Then he went to work for minimum wage for a furniture retailer for about a year.

The circumstances weighed on him. He went through a divorce and worried how would he provide for his three children.

Finally, he was hired by Southern Imperial, a Rockford company that makes hooks and dividers and label holders for retailers. He has been working in shipping and receiving for three years and likes the job, but he still doesn't earn the kind of money he made at Alcoa.

"It's been a big difference in lifestyle, but it is what it is. What I've learned from this is to just be grateful for what you got. Don't be greedy."

Frueh, who has remarried, is fortunate to have found work.

Page 2 of 3 - Job growth during the not-so-great recovery from the Great Recession has been extremely sluggish. According to state estimates, 144,505 people were working locally in August, meaning that the region has regained 3,820 jobs since the economy bottomed out in January 2010.

"You hear economists talk about a V-shaped recovery," said Bob Evans, head of the economics, business and accounting department at Rockford University. "That means jobs go down quickly and then come back quickly. This has been an L-shaped recovery. This was the most damaging recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s, and it's going to take years to recover."

A variety of factors, from increased productivity to lack of sufficient investment from the private and public sectors, have played a part.

"We also keep suffering these shocks, some self-inflicted," he said. "It seems like every few months we have a crisis, whether it be in Europe, with Greece, or the fights over sequestration cuts, the debt ceiling or the government shutdown.

"Business owners hate uncertainty, and we keep having these events that convince them to hold off a little longer before hiring."

Glenn Lego is one of the people left in the lurch.

He worked at PacSci Motion Control in Rockford for 30 years in the receiving department and was laid off in July 2008. In October 2008, PacSci's parent announced that it would move production of precision motors to one of its plants in California.

"At first, I really didn't know what to do with myself," the 66-year-old said. "I used to take walks downtown just to clear my head, and I'd look down in that river ... and at times it looked awfully tempting."

Lego signed up for job-search help from the Northern Illinois Area on Aging, which got him a job in the resource room of the state unemployment office. It was a two-year temporary contract to help him get by until he found a long-term job.

The long-term job never materialized.

"I'm basically retired. I tried my darndest to find a job, but I never even got an interview," said Lego, who receives Social Security and a pension from Veterans Affairs.

That's not unusual. Money magazine ran the story "Workers over 50 are the new 'unemployables'" in February. It was based on a 2012 Urban Institute study that said older workers were less likely to lose their jobs during the recession, but the ones who did were 20 percent less likely than 25- to 34-year-olds to become re-employed.

That's how it played out in Lego's family. His daughter, Melissa, also worked at PacSci Motion Control. The 30-year-old was hired by Bergstrom about a year ago.

Page 3 of 3 - Lego, though, has only received form letters in response to the resumes he has sent to employers.

"To me, they all say the same thing. 'Thanks, now go hurry up and die'."